


a bit of wreck in the mid-atlantic

by queenklu



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Sandwiches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What on earth is a Bartleby?” Eames mutters under his breath, chewing on the cap of a pen because it bothers Arthur, not because he derives any particular oral-fixation-esque pleasure from it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a bit of wreck in the mid-atlantic

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOTHING THAT I SAID I WAS WORKING ON. I, um, wrote this in a finals-induced fevered panic three months ago and promptly forgot about it, figuring it wasn't really fit for eyes that aren't an English Lit major's. But I remembered it recently and I think I've made it somewhat more manageable? I HOPE SO ANYWAY. 
> 
> Title from the short story _Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street_ by Herman Melville.

“What on earth is a Bartleby?” Eames mutters under his breath, chewing on the cap of a pen because it bothers Arthur, not because he derives any particular oral-fixation-esque pleasure from it.  
  
“The scrivener?”  
  
Eames blinks across the room to where Arthur has just poked his head up above a small mountain of research, looking rumpled but intrigued. “Yes. Have you heard of him?”  
  
“Read about him,” Arthur says with an odd sort of smirk. “You haven’t?”  
  
“No.” Eames taps at whatever-model handheld computer Arthur foisted on him for this job, looking for a search bar. “Apparently he’s a bit of a favorite with the mark. Maybe a relative, some sort of mentor…”  
  
He lets his mutterings trail off, absorbed in spelling the name correctly, ignoring the way Arthur ducks his head because distraction leads to nothing good. There, _Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of…_  
  
“A story,” Eames deadpans. “Fictional.”  
  
“It’s Herman Melville,” Arthur says, as if that means something. “You’ve seriously never heard of it?”  
  
Eames takes a quick gander at the introductory information. “Is it American?” he asks.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Then we don’t care.” He keeps his gaze on the screen, squinting in concentration. Sometimes Eames suspects Arthur believes he was born into English nobility, that he rebelled by fleeing the oppressive wealth of his parents to join the thrilling illicit underground world of dreamshare—because what else could his background be with this accent? Never mind that accents can be malleable. He’s never asked Arthur outright; doesn’t want to be proven right coupled with a fierce feeling of can’t be bothered.  
  
“It’s short, you’ll like it,” Arthur says, that lovely knife’s edge of condescension wiggling under Eames’ skin. Eames doesn’t deign it with an answer, and not just because he can’t think of one. He settles down into the couch with his feet kicked up, one last glance Arthur’s direction just to…check.  
  
The tale starts simply enough, though Eames begins doubting the reliability of the narrator immediately, and by the third paragraph it’s clear the story isn’t about this Bartleby person at all, but about the narrator instead, a lawyer who refuses to understand his own biases coloring the text. It certainly speaks to the mark’s character in some way, though if he sympathizes with the lawyer’s avoidance techniques instead of admiring the tale for its anti-capitalistic—  
  
 _‘In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.’_  
  
Sounds like Arthur, Eames thinks with a quiet smirk to himself. Arthur smiles more often these days, but when Eames first met him Arthur had been half-drowned by an unexpected rainstorm in Belize, dress pants and vest bunching in uncomfortable places, and after one (in hindsight) ill-timed comment about getting Arthur out of those clothes, the man took an instant near-aggressive dislike to Eames which lasted well over a year. Eames isn’t sure how they moved from that to the odd verbal sparring matches, but their current arrangement is more agreeable than outright hostility.  
  
He can’t imagine Arthur being a human copy-machine like Bartleby, or taking orders from a man who paid him so, so little, Christ, Bartleby would’ve barely had enough to live on. Arthur would never let anyone abuse him so—not now, certainly, but maybe there had been a time in his youth. When Arthur, fresh-faced and friendless, could only muster a quiet _I would prefer not to._  
  
‘“Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it towards him.    
  
“I would prefer not to,” said he.’  
  
A sinking feeling creeps along Eames’ bones as he continues reading, continues listening to the account given by an as-yet unnamed lawyer of his scrivener. It was a bad idea to equate Arthur with Bartleby—they are too close, _could be_ too similar. When was the last time anyone asked Arthur if he wanted to do all that research, instead of just assuming Arthur would magically get it done?  
  
 _Is that what happened with the inception job?_ Eames wonders against his will, thinking of how angry Cobb had been when they found out Fischer’s mind had been militarized. Perhaps if Arthur had delegated, told people he preferred not to do certain things so that he could have time to focus on what was important—  
  
The uneasiness starts curdling into a genuine sense of foreboding as the lawyer picks up on the fact that Bartleby never seems to leave the office, always the first one there in the mornings, staying long past everyone else going home. _He’s living there, Arthur’s living in the warehouse,_ Eames thinks, curling in on the tablet, not bothering to correct himself. And as the lawyer snoops through Bartleby’s desk, and only finds one measly packet of ginger cookies even though Bartleby hasn’t left for meals, hasn’t ever taken lunch or dinner—Eames shoots a helpless glance in Arthur’s direction, sees the lean hunch of his shoulders and has to look away again.  
  
Eames reads the rest in what is beginning to near a blind rage, more helplessly furious at this fictional lawyer with every passing sentence as he ignores Bartleby’s plight, his situation, as the lawyer choses to _abandon the property entirely_ rather than help this starving, hopeless man. As Bartleby is dragged to prison for vagrancy. As he refuses to eat.  
  
 _“I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away. “It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.”_  
  
One of the casualties of dreamshare is knowing how it feels to bleed out—or how your mind thinks it feels for a heart to pump and pump and come up empty. Eames has never died of starvation before, but he has a feeling that for Bartleby it might feel something like that.  
  
 _Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I paused; then went close up to him; stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed profoundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet._  
  
Eames’ shiver is one of revulsion, only building when his reaction ties him to the lawyer.  
  
 _“He’s asleep, aint he?”_  
  
“With kings and counsellors,” murmured I.  
  
“Melville you sick bloody fuck,” Eames growls under his breath, because he doesn’t have the lawyer’s name and will never get the lawyer’s name, apparently, and he needs to curse at someone. He reads through the so-called sequel in a blur, one last-ditch effort by the narrator to absolve himself of his sins, and can’t think of anything but Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.  
  
Eames drops the tablet on the couch—Arthur will have a new one for him if it breaks but maybe he’d prefer not to, Jesus Christ—and stands, running his hands through his hair to give it a sharp tug.  
  
“Right,” he says, “Right,” and Arthur might be (probably definitely is) staring at him now, but Eames doesn’t let himself look or think or second guess. He marches to his rucksack, fishes out the pesto-chicken-sundried-tomato sandwich on focaccia bread he bought for himself and brings it to Arthur’s desk, holds it out and tries to make it look something like an offer instead of an accusation.  
  
“Will you eat this?” Eames asks, looking at the sandwich more than he can bring himself to look at Arthur. “I mean, would you like to—have you—is it something you would like to eat?” Eames is already skipping ahead of Arthur’s refusal, mentally calculating the distance of the nearest bistro and how long he can keep himself from thinking about this too hard. (But that was the lawyer’s problem, wasn’t it? Not thinking about anything too hard.)  
  
Arthur’s mouth is open, then it isn’t. Then he looks at Eames, and then he starts to smile. “I’d pref—“  
  
“Don’t, for the love of God,” Eames blurts, and then bites his lip, closes his eyes. “I meant, _please_ , Arthur, try not to psychologically scar me anymore than I scar myself. There’s a dear.”  
  
Arthur’s smile drops with his confusion—no, what Eames would honestly, if he believed in such things, call concern. But he does believe today, he has to. Arthur is concerned for him.  
  
“This is why…I hate reading. Literature,” Eames hears himself stammer out, cringing all the while, still holding the damn sandwich like it contains the answers to the universe. “I get emotionally over-invested in the characters.”  
  
It feels like he’s said too much, revealed too much, as he should follow it up by lording over the philosophical texts he devours whenever he can because he loves the mental gymnastics of it; he doesn’t want Arthur thinking him stupid or uncultured. But he and Arthur don’t talk like this anyway, don’t divulge personal history like kids at some sort of sleepaway camp. He can tell Arthur is startled by it, if the twist of his fingers around his pen are anything to go by.  
  
Then, “That must’ve sucked at school,” Arthur says tentatively, offering it up like a completely different kind of foodstuff. “I hope you never had to read _1984,_ that was brutal.”  
  
“Dunno,” Eames says, replying in a daze brought on by Arthur’s word-choice. _Sucked_. He has never once heard Arthur use such a common vernacular. He thinks. “Dropped out Junior year, might’ve dodged that bullet. It was public school,” he adds on impulse, heartbeat jackrabbiting for no good reason, “nobody noticed.”  
  
To Eames’ eternal surprise, the grin that splits Arthur’s face reveals dimples in his cheeks, and not a single hint of anything pitying or righteously gleeful. “I, uh,” Arthur says, and ducks his head immediately, tugging at his earlobe but not trying to force the smile away. “You need a diploma or a GED to enlist. All I can say is thank god for military aptitude tests.”  
  
He draws a tiny circle in the air as if to say _Woohoo_ , and Eames has a feeling it should jar at him, tug at a muscle in his neck. He has never looked to forge Arthur, he is sure he’s never paid this much attention, but his instincts are telling him to react as if he’s missed something vitally important. Eames tries to listen to himself, but Arthur is so distracting.  
  
“I’m told I had trouble ‘applying myself in a learning environment,’” Arthur says, somehow plucking the sandwich out of Eames’ hand and simultaneously drawing air-quotes. He only takes half, pushes the rest back into Eames’ fingers and gives him a look that means eat.  
  
“Really?” Eames says, hitching one hip up on Arthur’s desk to see if he can, if Arthur will let him, and Arthur rolls his eyes but doesn’t make him move, too busy making pleased noises as he chews. “I got told I was a dreamer,” Eames sighs, fluttering his eyelashes.  
  
Arthur snorts, ungainly and real and happy. “Imagine that,” he says, and Eames does.  
  
“Are you happy?” he asks before he can stop himself. “And what I mean is,” he adds quickly, feeling a little bit like a panel-show host acting chummier than their real relationship would allow, “do you enjoy the work that you do? The research, and all that?”  
  
Arthur sits back a little in his chair, all for the purposes of leveling him with a Look. “Mr. Eames,” he says, the way he’s always said it: slightly disbelieving, unmistakably _fond_. “Are you going to dig through my desk looking for ginger cookies when I turn my back?”  
  
“Wouldn’t dream of it, darling,” Eames says, bit of a nebulous phrase considering their profession, and grins to show he knows it. “I might be ordering take-out for two and hanging around to make sure you go home at night for—let’s say the next two weeks and see if my neurosis has worn off by then.”  
  
He keeps his tone light but he isn’t actually joking. It’s just proof of the keen insight Eames was unwilling to ascribe to Arthur that the pointman’s eyes narrow in thought.  
  
“You’ve never cared what hours I keep before,” Arthur says, casually careful.  
  
Eames is struck by a memory from a dream, crushed down in the back of a taxi keeping Fischer out of the line of fire, broken glass trailing down the nape of his coat and Arthur screaming over the backseat, “ _Are you alright?”_ They hadn’t even known yet about Cobb’s limbo. Eames had written it off as adrenaline.  
  
“I was under the impression my attention would be unwelcome,” Eames says, suddenly unsure what to do with his arms. He starts to fold them, catches himself, winds up awkwardly grasping his own elbow.  
  
Arthur blinks, startled. “Are you talking about—Belize? When I hadn’t slept in three days and I was actually mildew-y in places and you made a comment about my ‘perky arse’?”  
  
It sounds worse when Arthur says it. But that could be his accent. “It is perky,” Eames weakly defends. “You went a bit mental, if you’ll recall the stapler you chucked at my head.”  
  
“Eames, Mal had just died,” Arthur sighs, sandwich tipped imploringly in his hands. “I would have thrown a stapler at _Ariadne_. If, you know, if she’d been in dreamshare at the time and I thought she looked at me wrong.”    
  
“My,” says Eames, “that…does put things in perspective.”  
  
“Yeah…” Arthur doesn’t sound sure, but he doesn’t quite make it a question. He quirks up one corner of his mouth, swivel-chair beneath him turning just enough to draw Eames’ attention; it’s a nervous tell, but Arthur doesn’t try to change the movement into something else. He knows Eames knows, and instead of drawing his guard up, Arthur is setting his guard aside to let Eames see.  
  
Eames’ heartbeat kickstarts in his chest, a clichéd phrase but uncomfortably real—he hates that he has to look away, Bartleby still quietly dying in the back of his mind wearing Arthur’s face.  
  
“I love my job, Eames,” Arthur says, ducking his head to catch Eames’ gaze. “And not just the dreaming parts.”  
  
 _Bartleby never did let himself dream,_ Eames thinks.  
  
“Arthur, it seems I owe you an apology,” he says, as professional as he can bear to be—in words alone, as his body slips up and spills his secrets. “I don’t like to make assumptions. And I dislike the fact that I’ve made some about you, apparently behind my own back.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Arthur asks, taking a too-large, smirking bite so he can talk while he chews. It’s the most unsophisticated, un-Arthur-like thing Eames has ever seen and he loves every second of it. “What’re you gon’ do ‘bout it?”  
  
Eames grins wide enough to show his delight and all his slightly crooked teeth. “Take you to dinner. A real dinner. Tonight, if the work can spare you.”  
  
Arthur’s look is considering, in the way that says he’s already made up his mind. “And if it can’t?”  
  
“Then tell me what I can do to help, so that we may ensure you get your beauty rest.” Eames can’t help but lower his voice a little, let it drag. Because it feels like—might be—years of denial or perhaps self-preservation (cowardice) have kept him from knowing how deep his fascination with this man goes, and he is catching up on lost time.  
  
“Are you going to tuck me in?” Arthur says, then blushes, defiant and grinning a challenge—like he thinks Eames will laugh, and Arthur needs to be ready to roll with it when he does.  
  
“If you prefer,” says Eames.  
  
Arthur takes a moment at that, but it’s a quietly happy moment that makes Eames think he’s revealed something of himself to Arthur that he might not have had the guts to show before.  
  
It strikes Eames then that—Arthur is _here_ , Arthur works hard and knows his limits, Arthur would never lie down and fade to nothing. Arthur fights for what he wants.  
  
Eames can bloody well do the same.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic can be found [here](http://queenklu.livejournal.com/402766.html) on lj if you're interested!


End file.
